ARGUING BY ANALOGY IN THE FETAL TISSUE DEBATE

ln the debate over fetal tissue use, an analogy is often drawn between removing organs from the body of a person who has been murdered to us e for transplantation, and collecting tissue from an aborted fetus to use for the same purpose. The murder victim analogy is taken by its pr oponents to show that even if abortion is the moral equivalent of murd er, there is still no good reason to refrain from using the fetal tiss ue, since as a society we do not see any problem about using organs fr om murder victims. However, I argue that the analogy between murder vi ctims and aborted fetuses does not hold - the two situations are not t he same in all morally relevant respects. Thus the murder victim analo gy does not provide an argument in favour of fetal tissue transplant. In conclusion, I point to some of the potential pitfalls of using anal ogies in ethical argument.